Preparation
Research
the Trusts
Tailor
your application
What is
Matched Funding?
Application
Letters
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Around 9,000 trusts give away nearly £2Bn each year in the UK !
It is worth remembering that their job is to use their money to support appropriate causes. By doing our homework well we are helping them to do their job. We are not grovelling and pleading, we are working together with the trusts so that both of us can achieve our aims.
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What are your aims? You MUST be able to give a clear and concise description of what you are trying to achieve. Do you have assessable targets for the first six months, year, three years, so that you will be able to demonstrate whether your project has been a success?
Have you set a realistic budget? Have you included all the costs; for example, if your project uses premises or equipment from another project or parent organisation are you making an appropriate contribution to cover rent and maintenance?
Planning the phases or stages of a project may, in some cases, give applications for funding a greater chance for success. For example imagine a project that includes a toilet with wheelchair access and a new kitchen both of which require water and drains to be laid in. The costs for these services will be attached to which ever is planned first, if the application for the toilet is more likely to be funded than the kitchen then it would be best to plan to do this first.
Though not strictly part of a budget the value of goods donated and volunteers' time should be included somewhere. This both demonstrates your commitment to the project and may be acceptable as Matched Funding. However most funding bodies will expect you to have plans to raise a proportion of the funds needed by your own efforts e.g. fundraising events such as coffee mornings, skittles nights, barn dances etc.
Is the project financially viable? You are unlikely to get full funding from a single trust so can you demonstrate where the balance of the funding is likely to come from? How much have you already raised - can you demonstrate your commitment to the project by describing the work that you have already put in?
How will the project be organised and managed? Will it be the direct responsibility of the church council or will you set up a separate management committee? A clearly separate management committee may make fund-raising easier in some cases. For example, some trusts will not make grants directly to churches; this objection may be overcome, however, if the committee's funds are separate from the church funds and will only be used for the purpose stated in the grant application. If you do take advantage of this you need to ensure that the committee is really separate; for example it should have its own bank account and, if it uses church premises, it should be based on a relatively formal agreement and pay an agreed rent (which itself would be part of the budget and grant application). Will the management committee include representatives of significant non-church agencies or organisations with whom you are working or who are advising you?
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Time spent in research will probably save time later. However this can be both time consuming and frustrating if you have no idea where to start!
Not all trusts will have rules or priorities into which your project will fit!
How will you know? Even worse, your application could be rejected because you have not sent all the information that they require?
The first thing you need to do is find trusts whose terms of reference include what you are trying to achieve. Sources of information include:
Council for Voluntary Services: phone 01922 654700 or 01922 722819
Black Country Consortium for Voluntary Sector Support: 0121 557 6222
You can find information on the Internet but unless you know what you are looking for this can be time consuming and may miss significant possibilities.
Here at Church Links we have access to Funding Body information, we receive regular updates on funding databases and are constantly involved in helping organisations like yours to make funding applications.
However there are some important steps which you need to have taken before you begin the process of looking for funding and Church Links can guide you through those steps, giving you access to examples of other projects which have been successful in making funding bids. We are also able to assist and guide you through the process of setting up the necessary procedures and paperwork which almost all funding bodies now expect you to have in place.
We can help you to produce a questionnaire which you will need to survey the local community members to ascertain their opinions on what they feel they would like you to address in your project. This information is vital in showing that you have consulted with your local community to find out what their needs are and will influence how your plans are developed.
We can help you if you still have questions about either your eligibility or the application process and get in touch with the trusts to clarify the situation, this will save time.
We Can Check:
How much will they fund? See below "Matched funding"
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Show how your aims fit their priorities; don't distort what you are aiming to achieve but as you write your application put your aims that meet their priorities at the top of the list.
What information do they ask for?
Give it ALL; budgets, forecasts, audited accounts, job descriptions etc.
Some trusts and grant awarding bodies refuse to fund the whole of a project even if the activities fall within their funding criteria; there are three main reasons for this: What is Matched Funding?
2. Demonstrating confidence: Have you managed to persuade others of the viability of your project and do they think that it is worth supporting?
3. Leverage: Local government administered schemes can be particularly keen on offering leverage as it draws more money into the area. They provide the initial funding that will lever in money from other trusts. For example they may agree to fund 25% or 30% of a project's costs in the expectation that this will enable you to raise the rest of the funds from trusts requiring matched funding. There is, however a potential pitfall, the agreement that you enter into may well require you to demonstrate that you have raised at least a proportion of the balance of the funds before you receive the actual money.
Leverage funding can be really useful to get the fund-raising process started. But if for example, you have an agreement for £250 towards a £1,000 project and then have problems raising the £750, you do not have £250 that you could use for a scaled down project.
Applications should have Immediate Appeal; First Impressions are important.
They will be asking: Is it worth reading on? Am I looking for reasons to support this project or reasons to reject it?
Consider writing a covering letter by hand in black ink this has been shown to create a good impression. Only do this, however, if your writing is clear and easy to read.
Personalise the letter, avoid "Dear Sir or Madam" if at all possible. Take care however, about personalising the envelope, if the named recipient is out of the office for a while your application may end up in an in-tray for some time. So either, make the envelope general by addressing it to the organisation, or use your contact's name but also put "Grant Application" on the envelope.
The application and letter should be:
Concise: The covering letter, for example, should usually be no longer than one side of A4.
Clear: Easy to read.
Well laid out: Support document headings should be consistent and recognisable; use the same font etc. for the project title and consistent headers or footers. (Ask yourself if all the papers become separated how easy would it be to identify yours and put your application back together?)
Photocopyable: Take care if using coloured paper or print; some colours of print do not photo copy well and some paper colours come out grey and obscure the print.
A typical letter should include:
Project Title
Dear …
A "sound bite" which summarises your project in a single sentence.
Introduction
The issue
The solution
Why should we be given money - what is special about us?
Why should you give us money - how do we meet your criteria?
An outline budget and funding plan
The request: be clear and explicit, ask for all the money that you need which is consistent with the trust's funding criteria.
Whom should they contact if they want clarification or further information? To whom should they send the cheque?
Once again Church Links can help in this area, advising, checking and revising your letter. We can collate the information required from the information you supply and ensure that the format in which it is presented will comply with the individual funding bodies guidelines.
Church Links has a combined experience of making grant applications of more than 8 years and has accessed more than £2million of funding.